Editor's Note: This is the conclusion of a two-part response from Lee Nason to a three-part op-ed by Jack W. Dean of Mattapoisett published during the week of Independence Day titled "Your View: Corporate Welfare" (July 5, 6 and 7). Part 1 of Ms. Nason's response, which made the argument that money and electioneering are less significant in elections than suggested, was published Sunday.

Not only do for-profit corporations corrupt our politicians and bureaucrats, but a wide variety of other collective entities including nonprofits, unions, professional guilds, civic organizations, and so forth use the same strategies to influence legislation that favors their cause or contributes to their financial well-being. For instance, the 2014 election cycle list of largest political donors names Tom Steyer’s privately owned corporation as the largest donor, but his executive search corporation appears to exist only to distribute Steyer’s contributions to politicians who are committed to limiting carbon emissions. The second largest donor was the NEA, a national teacher’s union, which opposes charter schools, education vouchers, home schooling or anything that would enable parents to choose educational options other than public schools. The third largest donor was privately held Bloomberg LP, which directed Michael Bloomberg’s money to gun control advocates and other progressive politicians who believe in regulating people for their own good. The fourth largest donor was NextGen Climate Action, which was founded by Tom Steyer to collect donations from others to support the climate action policies he favors. The fifth largest donor was the SEIU, a union that has been promoting a $15 minimum wage, amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and other progressive agenda items they believe would help their members. In fact, of the top 50 donors, 17 organizations were unions, three were environmental nonprofits (who have frequently benefited from judicial settlements converting fines into donations to themselves), a half dozen were privately held corporate entities directing donations by wealthy individuals to candidates who shared their political ideology, and three were subsets of the Democratic Party. Much less than half the big money in politics was spent by corporations seeking favorable legislative treatment.

Mr. Dean might reasonably respond that these other self-seeking organizations should be included in the list of organizations that should not be allowed to make political contributions. But that idea would effectively eliminate most political discussion and violate the constitutional rights of citizens. Our Constitution guarantees our freedom of assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances — that means that we have a constitutional right to join with others who agree with us to promote our favored public policies. This is necessary, since no one of us has a big enough megaphone to be heard and few of us have the time, energy, knowledge, and experience needed to mount an effective political campaign. Most of us join an organization fighting for values we believe in, donate some money to the organization, and allow professional lobbyists, public relations, advertising, and fundraising executives to do the work that requires time, energy, knowledge, and experience. Contrary to Mr. Dean’s assertion that spending money is not an exercise of free speech, the truth is that spending money is often the only way ordinary citizens can effectively exercise their free speech birthright.

Since all collective organizations are controlled by individuals — stockholders, wealthy individuals, union members, or members of civic and nonprofit organizations — in order to preserve their free speech rights, we must allow them to make joint expenditures for the candidates and causes they believe in. Corporations do not have the same rights as individuals — they are not allowed to vote — but the individuals who own and control corporations (and even the employees of those corporations) have a free speech right to use their jointly owned assets to support the candidates and causes they prefer. The interests of the corporation they own or work for are their legitimate interests and it is unconstitutional (and morally wrong) for us to try to deprive them of their rights to speak in favor of their own interests. This is what the Supreme Court decided in Citizen’s United and it is a good decision to preserve free speech and free associations as the rights of individual citizens.

But Mr. Dean’s recommendation has an additional and very dangerous downside. If citizens are not allowed to assemble and support their political causes in an effective manner, a vacuum would be created that can only be filled by our professional politicians. If challengers cannot attract the support of wealthy individuals willing to invest in them, the number of challengers from outside the political elite class will decline sharply. Incumbents would necessarily dominate political discussions and many good ideas and good policy prescriptions would never be heard. It is no big surprise that so many incumbent politicians would love to overturn Citizen’s United, get private money out of politics, and run the show unobstructed by annoying constituents and dangerous potential challengers.

If we reject Mr. Dean’s proposals, as I do, doesn’t that leave us in a quandary? How can we prevent wealthy individuals or powerful collective entities from corrupting our political system?

In my view, the only way to mitigate the problem is to withdraw regulatory powers from politicians. If governments did not have the power of life and death over corporations and unions and nonprofits and civic organizations, those collectives would have no incentive to seek favors and subsidies from government politicians and bureaucrats. In particular, if corporate managers did not have to curry favor with government in order to survive, they might even refocus their energy on satisfying the preferences of consumers — the proper and beneficial activity for businesses in a free market economy. Restrain governments by eliminating all subsidies to corporations and other collective entities similar to how we restrain governments from subsidizing religious organizations. Refocus government on protecting citizen rights, including property rights and the rights to have clean water and clean air to breathe. Eliminate opportunities for plunder by abolishing eminent domain (except perhaps for public facilities), civil forfeiture, and all government-granted monopolies in utilities and communications and postal services. Establish clean air and water standards that, when violated, are enforced with fines that are paid into the treasury or to the victims of the pollution rather than to environmental lobbying organizations.

Over the last couple of centuries, we allowed our politicians to create a huge and nearly omnipotent government and now we are acting surprised when corporations, individuals and other collective entities seek favorable treatment from that omnipotent state. How disingenuous of us. This was a foreseeable problem. The answer to the problem is not to disenfranchise citizens and abolish their freedoms of speech and assembly; the answer to the problem is to dismantle the near omnipotence of our leviathan government and return it to the limited government ideal established by our founders.

Lee Nason lives in New Bedford.

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